THE BODY POSITIVITY MOVEMENT IS NOT SO POSITIVE ANYMORE

“If we are going to criticize magazines for putting anorexic women on the covers of these magazines because it promotes an unhealthy lifestyle, I don’t think it’s any different putting morbidly obese women on these magazine covers either”

Obesity is bad for your health.

Anorexia is bad for your health.

Having curves is great.

Not having curves is also great.

Being respectful towards anyone regardless of how they look is even better!

You can love yourself and still want to improve on yourself.

As someone who has struggled with her weight for as long as I can remember, I have always wondered about the difference between body positivity and fat acceptance but I was too afraid to talk about it because of fear of being canceled.

Usually when someone expresses a slightly different opinion from the norm, there is a tendency to get dragged all over social media and I wasn’t willing to intentionally put myself in the position to be dragged… but here I am, still writing about it.

I understand body positivity to be the ability to enjoy the body that you have in the state that it currently is without feeling guilty or less human. Whether its your body just naturally aging, whether you just had a baby and are struggling to come to terms with what your body now looks like, whether you had an accident and now have some deformity or scars as a result… your body deserves to be loved in her current state while you work towards taking her to a place that makes you more comfortable.

I really do feel that the focus of body positivity which is that “all bodies are beautiful” has gotten lost in the amount of heated debated around the topic. The main goal which was to allow people of different colours, races, disabilities and so on, view their bodies as good bodies just somehow got wiped out of the narrative because people became so obsessed with criticizing plus sized people who were part of that movement.

The general idea of the body positivity movement is to highlight the toxic nature of beauty standards that are super unattainable. It aims to allow people grab something more tangible and attainable which is self love.

But self love and acceptance are super hard things.

The truth is, the body positivity movement is still incredibly superficial. Even though it aims to address different types of issues, and dismantle the system that surrounds beauty standards, in a way, it somehow contributes to beauty standards. And I believe that it reinforces the toxic message that you should be beautiful.

I strongly believe there is more to offer than how I look. Why do I have to be beautiful? Beauty is subjective and fleeting.

I struggle to understand why any other human has the audacity to decide who is and isn’t beautiful and why some people get offended by the appearance of others, especially when it has no effect on their lives.

And just like the popular saying goes — “Don’t judge a book by its cover” if we were all blind, nobodys appearance would really matter because we wouldn’t even be able to see them in the first place.

Somehow, the body positivity movement reinforces toxic positivity. Toxic positivity basically involves dismissing negative emotions and being in a constant state of positivity even though deep down, you may be feeling alienated and disconnected. Usually, as soon as you decide that you don’t like something about your body and you want to change it, you are shamed and told that you are giving into societies beauty standards or that you are letting patriarchy win. The first person who comes to mind with this is Adele.

Adele recently lost a ton of weight and when she came back with her body transformation, she got a lot of heat because she succumbed to the “beauty standards”. People who were supposedly fighting against her being body shamed when she was a bigger women, literally body shamed her for loosing weight. It is actually mind blowing.

The problem I am noticing with the body positivity movement is the fact that people romanticize everything. Stretch marks are beautiful, acne scars are magical, cellulite is powerful. The movement tries so hard to normalize everything but the problem is that as soon as you begin pointing out these “flaws” in a bid to normalize them, you are making them seem like they weren’t normal in the first place. Sensationalizing things that are normal makes them not normal! I mean, can I just have my scars. They literally don’t mean anything and no! they don’t show where I come from. The only story they tell is that I am human.

Way forward

I recently learnt about the term Body Neutrality. Body Neutrality means taking a neutral perspective towards your body, meaning that you do not have to cultivate a love for your body or feel that you have to love your body every day. You may not always love your body, but you may still live happily and appreciate everything your body can do.

The whole point of body neutrality is that it helps to detach your self worth from your appearance. It encourages mindfulness… to focus on the fact that your body helps you function and stay alive rather than what your body looks like on the outside.

So in the end, you owe noone beauty… after all, you didn’t mold yourself. Your first and major duty is to keep your body healthy no matter what it looks like. Your body loves you and while I know this may be hard to hear, it is true. I mean, it’s kept you alive this whole time. It has allowed you exist regardless of how it looks and what other people think of it. You are so much more than just your outward appearance.